Employees have changed in the last 50 years...

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Cheat Sheet for Free Car Dealer Training Resources About once a week I get asked if there is a place where someone can go to see all of my free training resources cataloged in an easily digestible format. For car dealers looking for just video training, we created a Suggested Training Curriculum for Car(…)

You Don’t Have Sales Managers; You’ve Got Deskers! Most dealerships I work with seem to suffer from too few managers. They don’t have enough managers to control the sales floor, monitor phone calls and other activities, oversee the basic Road-to-the-Sale, ensure the CRM is being used properly or even train their own sales teams. Why(…)

No gimmicks and no tricks. In this article I am going to give you the step-by-step instructions you need to start mystery shopping your dealership’s internet sales team (and your competitors’ teams) without spending a dime (or by spending very little). In the interest of full disclosure, my company completes a comprehensive mystery shop(…)

There is a misconception in automotive retail that you only need one trade-in partner providing your dealership with trade leads. This is lunacy and would be the 1990’s equivalent of advertising on just one radio station. For those who weren’t around dealerships back in the 90s, limiting yourself to advertising on just one radio(…)

The Solution to the Never-Ending Car Dealer Staffing Problem So much has been written about the decades-long issues of turnover and staffing in automotive retail that I continue to be amazed when I read headlines like this one from Automotive News recently: Dealership turnover squeezing profits – NADA study spotlights struggles in recruitment and retention How(…)

How To Design Your Website to Convert More Visitors into Buyers! Little-known baseball great and minor league manager Rocky Bridges once said “There are three things the average man thinks he can do better than anybody else: build a fire, run a hotel and manage a baseball team.” If Rocky were alive today he might(…)

Sorry, but Your Special’s Pages Stink… and That’s Costing You Sales! Let’s agree on a few things before we dive into some very simple steps to growing your sales with working specials pages: As the article title explained: Your specials pages are meant to drive customers, not drive them away!; and Your website has(…)

If you’re like most of the car dealers, dealer groups and OEMs I work with or address at 20 groups, retargeting website visitors with display advertising consumes roughly a third to a half of your overall digital marketing budget. Moreover, most of the Dealers and General Managers say that accurately measuring the results of(…)

As I wrote in 2015’s Self-Driving Cars: the Winners and the Losers, new car dealers will be among the “Obvious Losers” when, not if, self-driving vehicles become ubiquitous. However, I also predicted that this evolution wouldn’t likely begin impacting new car dealers before 2025. My timeline has actually contracted a little in the last(…)

This may sound like strange advice since I teach dealers how to implement both an Appointment Culture and The Perfect Appointment in their dealerships… but, will you please shut up about the appointments already? You are failing to set real appointments that show and buy, precisely because you talk so much about appointments that(…)

(This is an update of a 2011 article I wrote for Digital Dealer Magazine. For some reason, my byline is absent in the online version of that post.) As I’ve said (and written) for a decade, if you’re a for-profit business, your website has only two goals: Attract Visitors. Convert those Visitors into Customers. Attract.(…)

One of the great things about what I do is that I get to speak to a lot of dealer groups. It’s something I really enjoy doing; but more than that, it’s something I feel needs to be done. I believe an educated dealer is a successful dealer; and there is just so much misinformation(…)

Forgive the digression, but when an invention comes along that literally changes the course of mankind, we believe it deserves mention here on AskTheManager.com. The wheel The automobile The personal computer The Internet Coke Zero, The iPhone … and now, Bug-A-Salt! Yes, Bug-A-Salt – or, more specifically, the Bug-A-Salt 2.0 Insect Eradication Gun –(…)

I hate to break it to you, but if you run a for-profit business – like a car dealership – then your website has just two important goals: Goal #1 – Attract Visitors Goal #2 – Convert Visitors Sorry, that’s it. Attracting and converting visitors are the only real value your website provides and(…)

Undeniable Advantage marks the first comprehensive free live training that will actually deliver real-world tactics and strategies your team can employ today! Post Falls, ID – June 27, 2016 In a bold and broad effort to change how businesses receive valuable and actionable training, the leading digital marketing and sales training expert in automotive(…)

More than a few years ago, we compiled a list of the Ten Best Decision-Making Books Ever. And while there have been plenty of other books written on the subject since then, none have been able to crack the list… until now. A few weeks ago, an author contacted us and asked that we(…)

Stop Overthinking Internet Sales: 7 Simple Strategies for Closing More Deals Today! The perception of internet sales for many dealers and traditional sales managers is that it’s still a confusing area best left to those who are more “technologically proficient.” Moreover, industry vendors, other so-called experts and even some trainers continue to profit in keeping(…)

The Best Way To Overcome Today’s Price Objections Whether training sales managers for an OEM or a call center for a single-point dealer, the concern posed more than any other recently is how to overcome price objections on the phone in today’s transparent environment. Most dealers, you see, do a decent job of managing objections(…)

The three-minute Be-Back process that actually works… When dealers ask me to help their teams improve their be-back appointment percentage, the first thing I say is “call them.” By that, I mean, “Pick up the damn phone and actually call a be-back for once in your ever-loving life!” I’m not trying to be a jerk;(…)

I’ve often heard top process people say something like “The first step to process improvement is understanding what needs to be improved.” Knowing, they say, is half the battle. We mystery shop hundreds of dealers each year and like to think we learn something new with each shop. Certainly, the shop reports can be eye-opening(…)